Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Less Tall Megan

The skies are blue, the garden is growing, school is ending, and the more Megan McArdle is mocked the more successful she becomes, which is why we have been avoiding her work and cultivating cucumbers, tomatoes and basil instead of snark. Fortunately McArdle does not believe in working on weekends or holidays, so there is not a enormous backlog to go through.

Feeling Wealthy Vs Being Wealthy The rich aren't as rich as you think they are. For instance, I cannot afford to hire a landscape gardener because I am paying for a lavish wedding, honeymoon in Hawaii, new house and home remodeling. It's just so limiting.

Financial Biological Determinism Professors have too much money. Why should academics have so much money when they hate money? People like me should have more money, not academics. "Besides, academics, like journalists, have developed sour grapes to a high art: they quickly learn to regard expensive possessions as somewhat vulgar."

Measles Spreading In Massachusetts I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine, except when it benefits me and my prospective children.

The post regarding crash victims is really rich. Everyone, please meet Megan Mcardle: Champion of personal injury plaintiff's attorneys. I mean, if there's anything we know about our Jane, it's that she steadfast beleives in the inviolable right of consumers to sue giant corporate entities and force a settlement, even if liability is somewhat in doubt.

The comments, as always, are outstanding. Despite the valiant efforts of a few to point out that, hey, this bankruptcy reorg followed the letter of the law, in which (a) the gov't was the only bidder (no private creditors intervened or made offers) and (b) the reorg plan was independently approved by the Bankruptcy Court, it has nevertheless been *decided* that this was a purely political, Chicago-style act to reward union voters and screw over crash victims, who don't donate to the DNC, or something.

What an idiot. The congresswoman wasn't criticizing Republicans for not driving American cars, and she definitely wasn't saying that all Americans should drive American cars. So McIdiot's tee-heeing about hypocrisy only confirms that she doesn't know what the definition of hypocrisy is. So stupid.

From this we can derive that Ms. Megan is taking both Frigid I and Frigid II classes in the basement bomb shelter at AIPAC headquarters in D.C.

The wives of Lucianne Goldberg's Obese Little Boy (she's on negotiable retainer...as a spouse, not a Frigid instructor) and Howie Kurtz teach these classes, which are widely attended by a litany of Georgetown wives.

I'm more than willing to find out if Megan's right - let's jack taxes on the rich (including her) way up, for about, oh, 30 years (equal time with Reaganomics). If it doesn't actually raise revenues, well, such is economic theory!

Batocchio: "If it doesn't raise revenues-" insist that it WILL raise revenues, and tax the rich even more!

Its what they're doing now with their stupid "Tax cuts will fix everything!" claim. Right now Taxes are just about the lowest they've ever been- so? There is also the insistance that a War will stimulate the economy. We have 3+ wars going simultaneously- and?

Good gawd, both the post and comments on academia are insufferable. And mcmegan even mentions her " consumer finance reporting." what f-ing "reporting? She has no facts about academia, just impressions and theories based on anecdotes.

I really wish there were a way to register how much i loathe the atlantic for giving this moran a platform. Because clicks don't quite translate to "point, laugh, and weep at the absurdity of it all."

Megan, who never, ever passes up the opportunity to use the pages of the Atlantic to boast about her conspicuous consumption, writing about the ownership of expensive things being "vulgar"? Sour grapes indeed. I think the typing of those two words might be the closest to self-awareness she's come, if I wasn't almost certain she has no idea what they actually mean.

That's a two-fer. McArdle thinks if you admit you are doing something (that other people realize is) wrong, you can go ahead and do it. And McArdle decided in prep school that it was okay to be unable to own or experience as much as her wealthier classmates because possessions are vulgar.

wow, that post about privilege is just.... wow. Her parents didn't read to her because she learned to read young -- how did she even have the opportunity to learn to read that young? she really has no idea how other people live, does she?

I think good advice for Megan is: don't remodel the backyard. Financially, it's almost never worth it. Once you start thinking of the house as your sort of personal Eden, it has to become a money sinkhole. Save up the money and buy a better or bigger house with it, one in which the owner had already sunk his or her own money remodelling the backyard (money which he is almost guaranteed to never fully recoup.)

I don't know how she, of all people, doesn't know this.

On the other hand, the tendency of left-liberals to defend the automotive (and it wasn't just GM) bailout is fascinating. It's an entirely vicarious exercise, because generally people who are well-informed enough to figure out the actual financial consequences of the bailout and yet support the bailout nonetheless, are also people who should presumably be intelligent enough to not buy an Big Three car (with certain exceptions, such as the Ford Flex or F-150).

(The worst part about remodelling is that it tends to be done in equity, i.e. by paying the full amount upfront, unless financed with extremely inadvisable reverse mortgages, while purchases of houses (including houses that have already been remodelled) are done in debt, which not only is not now-money, it's also tax-deductible. When interest rates are as low as they are now, one should prefer debt to equity overwhelmingly. Debt, after all, is how perhaps the greatest capitalists of the post-war era, Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, made their money. Take financial advice from Kravis, not Warren Buffett, who just got lucky.)

I love the arguments that say that someone isn't rich because they can't satisfy all of their wants or in economic speak their demand doesn't approximate their wants. Its like saying even though I make 300,000 dollars a year because I can't do coke off a strippers ass with a diamond straw while a penguin blows me then I'm not rich.

The converse of this is the idea that poor people aren't poor because they have a shiny tv.